Formula 2 championship winner Andy Soucek topped the timesheets at Jerez today, the first of three days of rookie testing.

The Spaniard, who was awarded the drive as part of his prize for winning the inaugural championship, completed 87 laps, was one of the main pace-setters for much of the day, and his time of 1:19.158, posted with an hour of the session remaining, was never bettered.

Second quickest was Paul di Resta, one of two drivers on duty for force India. In the morning, JR Hildebrand was on duty for the Silverstone-based outfit, with Scot di Resta taking over in afternoon.

The American, who focussed on baseline runs and circuit familiarisation in order to prepare for the coming two days, completed 49 laps with a best time of 1:20.537, the fifth quickest time of the morning. As track conditions improved overall times dropped and his lap was eventually the 10th quickest of the day.

di Resta similarly worked through a programme to get fully comfortable in the car. With weather clear and good mechanical reliability, the 23-year-old from West Lothian was able to complete 46 laps with a fastest time of 1:19.369. The Scot will continue in the car tomorrow morning before Hildebrand takes over in the afternoon.

"I was really impressed with the ability of the car," said the American. "It is different in every way to what I'm used to, both in terms of the outright speed, but also in terms of the characteristics of the car and how it behaves, brakes and drives through corners. Having raced on ovals I'm used to a high top speed, so that wasn't too much of a shock, but the amount of load it runs and how much speed you can carry through the corner took some getting used to. The track was clearly improving throughout the morning, so based on the program we were running, in terms of relative pace we were doing pretty well. I felt I was getting there and was starting to get the most out of the car, particularly towards the end of the morning. I think we still had some free time in the car. I lost my best lap by using a bit too much of the road and on my last run I just flat spotted the tyres straight out of the pits, which made a drastic difference in how good the car was and I really couldn't get the ultimate lap-time from it. It was a little bit frustrating from the standpoint of losing the last two runs, but we were fifth quickest when my day was effectively done so I was pretty happy with my first outing."

"Today was very constructive," added di Resta, "and we achieved what we wanted to achieve, which was to get familiar with the car and build up to speed slowly to fully prepare for the rest of the test. We tried a few different things, worked on a few set-up items and certainly went forward. That was the main goal, just building up on my side, learning more and moving forward together with the team. The VJM02 is certainly impressive and although I am still learning, I felt I could get to grips with it fairly quickly. I've driven the McLaren twice before and this experience has helped me today, but for sure there's a lot of difference between the last time and today. It's obviously a new circuit and the car is built to the new regulations with slick tyres and less downforce but it behaved as I expected and we didn't have any issues at all. We were quite fortunate in that we got a lot of time and there weren't many stoppages. I wasn't trying to go for a time as such, just to get the most out of the car and myself to set up for the coming two days. In the end I could set a good time, but this wasn't the overall goal for today. The team will have a different approach tomorrow and we will be testing some 2010 development parts but the aim will be to get as much track time as possible and see how it goes. I'm looking forward to getting back in there and working with the team again."

McLaren had Gary Paffett and Oliver Turvey on duty. Paffett kicked off the day's programme, conducting a number of aero configuration evaluations before focusing on tyres, and how they will perform in 2010 with higher fuel-loads.